Hachijo-jima
Monday, September 22nd, 2008After the Final Presentation of the Program (Gee, maybe I should write about that aswell) We had another couple of days in Japan.
Not enough to explore the lost continent of Okinawa, but enough to visit a little island with the vibe of it.
If you go south-south-east from Tokyo you will pass over a small archipelago of nice little islands.
Don’t go to far though. Keep going and you’ll find the famous Iwo Jima and several islands still off-limits to the public due to undetonated arsenal.
However, before those nasty islands there are a few nice Sub-Tropical Islands.
The problem with Tokyo is, it is not anywhere near something that can call itself sub-tropical. So a 10-hour Boatride was needed to get us there. With much emotion we said goodbye to tokyo.
Meh, who am I kidding. Nice city, but I’ve lived there for 4 months and I am just not that much of a city person.
On board our luxury liner we set out for the islands waking up to this sight.
Further inland we could tell this was definitely the island getaway we were looking for. Lots of island, not so much human influence.
I could tell stories about the next couple of days but they consisted of lazing in the sun at different locations and lazing in the shade when the sun got too much. There was sun, sand, trees and all that other good stuff you want on a sub-tropical island.
The main problem as I see it is that Tropical Islands come with tropical storms.
Here is us watching it approach
Here is us realizing we should probably find shelter
And there is no picture showing how wet we were as we were too busy toweling off at the local Ozzie bar.
A major benefit of tropical storms is that they blow themselves out soon. Sometimes taking some stuff with them, like half a Louisiana City, but generally only relieving the hot, humid feeling temporarily. So after the Storm we went to see one of the main tourist attractions of the island
In Hachijo jima one can find 7 out of 8 species of luminescent mushrooms found in the world.
I swear to god it was more exciting than this picture shows, it just takes 10 of those to be able to read a newspaper and another 40 or so to give off enough light to make a decent picture. The exciting bit was due to having 40 people stumble through a thicket of woods with no light other than these tiny pinpricks lighting their way.
Well, it would have been if the only person to run into overhead branches hadn’t been me. Of course the woods were kept cleared up to Japanese Head-level.
That marked the end of our relaxing stay at our local tropical island. Instead of taking a boat back (which unlike the boat there only goes back by day, I invite you to find this island on google maps or smthg and look up all the interesting scenery to see on the trip back) we flew. So we bade goodbye to our host, a nice lady who next to painting also ran a guesthouse (damn, must put up picture of her painting) and drove us around, and boarded a plane to tokyo where we could start the fascinating “Wait to fly away tomorrow morning”
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Quote of the day:
Money doesn’t buy happiness but it will allow you to look for it in faraway places.
- Some Mug I once bought my sister
